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Control Groups, Rally Points and Controlling Efficiency
The 'meta-game' refers to how you are physically pressing buttons, setting control groups, rally points and so forth. Developing a meta-game system that is comfortable for you is important. Even if you have perfect timing and systematic thinking, bad meta-game mechanics can unravel your game play. Units may end up scattered across the map, drones may sit idle at hatcheries when you forget to set rally points for them, and so forth. When you have everything structured and ordered smoothly and you follow set routines, you free up mental space to think about the other things that should have conscious priority in the heat of a match. What follows is more or less the 'standard' control group system for zerg. It works. It's simple. And it's specific to zerg. Set units to control groups at the soonest possible opportunity. Get used to flicking between control groups on the fly, accurately. This will dramatically increase your APM and ability to be in multiple places at once. It is possible, by using a combination of control groups, hotkeys, and the shift+click function, to efficiently multitask any number of elements in your play style. For example: scouting, harassing, injecting, expanding, building units and microing your army at the same time. This is obviously pro level gameplay, but the concept is essentially the same. might clarify Control Groups 1, 2 , 3 > Basic Army: Use these for your basic army. I always have lings/primary 'upfront' units on 1, roaches/banelings (never at the same time), basically slightly more situational units on 2, and mutas/flying/harass units on 3. This isn't set in stone (i sometimes have lings on 1 roaches on 2 and banelings on 3, or lings and mutas on 1, roaches and hydras on 2 and infestors on 3... you get the idea) . The idea here is to develop a vague 'tactical vibe' for a hotkey, and stick units on that hotkey that are relevent to that 'vibe', which units you actually put on that hotkey is dependent on your unit composition. Experiment with this concept and get used to hitting the first 3 hotkeys to jump between and control individual unit compositions in your army. This is also essentially the beginnings of micro. (I will go into more detail about control strategies and fundamentals in a moment but first i will finish the hotkey list) Control Group 4 > All Hatcheries : This is an important one for quick production of all of your units, and also the ability to set a rally point for all of your hatcheries by right clicking with this control group selected. It is a good idea to remember to do this to somewhere relevant at the very least every time you add a hatchery to your all hatcheries control group. As soon as you have set a new hatchery to be built and it begins its embryonic phase, follow these steps: Click Hatchery > SHIFT+4 ... its that simple! Please note that the SHIFT+# technique only works for adding new elements to an already created control group. In the beginning of the game, you will need to select your hatchery and hit CTRL+4 (then 5 as you will be adding the queen to this control group later). With all of your hatcheries set to one hotkey you can simply hit 4>S>: VV : [unit hotkey however many times applicable (for example). Which will begin building units from all hatcheries, while accessing the sum total of all larva produced by your queen injects. Remember to hit 4 once as hitting it twice will set your POV at the last added hatchery to that control group. Simply hitting 4 once and then administering your unit production will send those units to the rally point you have set, meaning you don't have to worry about where they are going or having to find those units later on. Remember the rule: that this process of unit creation should ideally be done as your larva drops and just after you have injected (by which time you should have ideally taken in the relevant information about base saturation and supply cap and have hotkeyed back to your army/scout/harass units, then followed with 4>hotkeys), and the specific drone/unit/overlord ratio should be an informed decision based on the various input parameters explained through the duration of this guide. Control Groups 5 > 6 > 7 > 8 (>9&0 if needed) : These are your individual hatchery + Queen control groups. This setup gives you optimal coverage for injecting all your hatcheries extremely quickly, it also gives you the advantage of being able to check the state of your bases, looking at building production times, the state of drone saturation e.t.c. These hotkeys are your meta-game mechanics used to administer your inject rounds. This is the mechanical core of managing your macro efficiency! These control groups are what you will have ideally ingrained into your reflex response based on your mental triggers to administer your larva inject at the exact point it is efficient to do so. In relation to the control group 4 comment about adding a new hatchery to it, an extention of that rule applies to this control group. As soon as you place a hatchery follow these steps: click hatchery > SHIFT+4 (adding to your all hatcheries control group'' > CTRL+#5/6/7/8 > right click minerals > Hit 4 > right click somewhere to set rally point for the newly updated 'all hatcheries' [ > ? > PROFIT! ]. you must also remember to return periodically to catch it as it pops and set a queen into production, as this queen pops spacebar as you hear the screech then: ''select Queen > shift+#5/6/7/8 You should do this as soon as possible (as with any control group binding). My general rule is i have my main on 5, my natural on 6, my third on 7 and my 4th on 8, it is very rare i am running off more than 4 bases, and if i move to a 5th, by that time in the game i am usually mined out from my main anyway, so i have never really needed any more than 4 hotkeys for all of my hatcheries. It is also worth noting here that setting your drone rally point now is the best time to do it, as you are setting up the control groups for your new hatchery. Also, depending on the state of the saturation at your other bases, it may be a good idea to (after adding this hatchery to your control group 4) first hit 4 and then place the drone rally from ALL of your hatcheries to the new expansion, this is also of course situational based on wether you are capable of defending the traveling drones from your other bases. Now you have this control group - Hatchery&Queen setup when you need to inject, it takes you literally 2 seconds to position your mouse pointer in the middle of the screen and go 55vClick>66vClick.77vClick e.t.c. Remember earlier on where i was explaining the visual input you will be receiving from checking your overlord count and state of drone saturation. This is the physical action that triggers your need to look at your drone saturation and supply cap ready for you to make your unit composition decision in a few moments when you use the larva that has just been created, remembering that the army unit choices should be strategically chosen based on the various points raised in the unit production section of this guide, keeping in mind the potential relative resource use of said unit production that we looked at in the resource and economy section of this guide. Furthermore all of this in turn should be attached intimately to the rhythm created by your developed systematic approach to punctual Queen injection and larva production. Control groups 9 & 0 : I personally use 9 for Nydus Worm and 0 for Creep Tumours, these are optional of course. Allot of Zerg use these hotkeys on a very situational basis, think of them as your reserve hotkeys for things like creep tumors, extra Queens, Nydus worm, tech buildings e.t.c. A good strategy to use with one of these extra hotkeys is to bind an overlord and an extra queen to one of them and use that overlord to spread creep especially for that queen to drop tumors, this is an amazingly quick and effective way of spreading creep! Another element of meta-game mechanics is adding units to control groups already established, if you are controlling units and, for instance you see just hatched units running on the minimap to your rally, it is sometimes an idea to click the mini map to center POV over where they are running, hit the relevant control group ONCE (as hitting it twice centers the POV over the control group) then follow these steps: box select the units on screen > SHIFT+relevant control group number. This is only really effective if one unit type is running and you are adding it to the control group you are using for that unit type. + Show Spoiler + Another way of doing this is simply to CTRL+SHIFT+Click one of the units (as it will select all units of that type on screen) > ctrl+relevant control group number. holding CTRL+SHIFT selects all of that unit type and adds it to the currently selected group, you then need to 'set' that group by hitting CTRL+the C-group # (I have sectioned this part out as i believe there is a better way of doing this although i need to clarify what the exact steps are, hence this little bit is due to be altered and put back into the guide proper.) You May find an issue with units being 'lost' or hard to click under or in amongst overlords if you have recently massed them for supply reasons, to solve this always get into the habit of remembering that you have just set overlords to spawn and as you hear them popping from your hatcheries select them at your base/rally point and send them around the map (and if you have lair tech, spread creep very quickly) by following these steps: CTRL+Click an overlord to select all on screen > (if you have lair tech hit g to begin generating creep) > right click somewhere on mini map > SHIFT+Click the wireframe box at the bottom of the screen (the thing with the little unit icons you have selected) this de-selects an overlord from the selection > right click another point on the minimap > Shift Click Wireframe > repeat steps as many times as applicable. This will very quickly spreads your overlords. Find time to do this, (and ideally place them in optimally strategical positions, obviously) it clears the air over your rally point and spreads creep not to mention gives you eyes all over the map. A similar process can be used for appending individual units from a defined control group for strategical/scouting reasons. A good example of this is sending 2 of your first 4 zerglings to each of the Xel-Naga towers (obviously this example is for a map with only 2 towers) after you have bound them to control group 1 right as they initially pop (which you should get into the practice of doing), I will use said example of towers and lings to explain the process, which is as follows: Hit 1 (or the relevant C-group number) > right click eye on minimap to send all lings to the tower > SHIFT+click an icon in the wireframe box > click second eye on minimap > shift click wireframe box > hit CTRL+1 (or relevant C-group number) to re-define the control group. If you do not do this last step, the next time you issue a move command the two lings at the towers will run to your move command point. keep that in mind and remember in any case like this you have to re-define the control group after you have appended units from it. This technique can be very powerful when used with scouting parties e.t.c. You should practice to get comfortable with adding and appending individual units or groups of units from defined control groups. It will increase your ability to multitask and add to your overall unit organization. Another important point is as you are making units from larva (after hitting 4 and then administering your units into production) and while you have the eggs selected, by right clicking you can set a rally point that is separate from your hatcheries rally point. Be very careful with this as you can often get quite messy with where you're sending units through forgetting where you set their rally point. A general rule is unless you are rallying units into your enemies base and have a clear tactical advantage, or are rallying units to an outpost where you are pushing with your army further forward than the rally point you just set, only use your hatcheries base rally point, the one you set by right clicking while you have the 4th control group selected. This stops you placing manual rally points for the eggs and forgetting where you placed them. It is generally also quite a messy technique to rally units to another unit, ''as ( i may be wrong with this but it seems to happen to me) If that unit dies, any units traveling to it stop in a random point of the map! this is obviously a bad mechanic so try to avoid it as much as possible. Be clever about rally points, try to predominantly use the rally point u can set with control group 4 selected, set them somewhere strategically advantageous in an obvious point mid way between your bases, or in the middle of the map if applicable, basically be intelligent about it. You get the idea. Using control groups should be second nature to you, practice with hopping from one thing to another, from your Army unit control groups to your hatcheries and back again, practice using this in conjunction with the shift+click function with your army units to keep them on the move (or attacking) while you fly round your hatcheries injecting or placing buildings, spreading creep or using other units to harass/scout. As important as using control groups is accurately and punctually setting, altering and maintaining them. Which in turn is as important as setting your rally points every time you build a new hatchery or secure a new strategical point on the map. Practice the various SHIFT+Click/CTRL+click/CTRL+SHIFT+click/box select e.t.c. techniques i have mentioned and '''get used to' using control groups, rally points and hotkeys in general. Using these in conjunction with the techniques you have been developing through the duration of this guide will enable you to effectively and eventually easily manage the many overlapping responsibilities in maintaining your macro efficiency and intelligently developing your army and presence on the map while simultaneously keeping yourself on the front line of battle, microing your units around the map. It is also highly important to develop the ability to use the already hard-coded hotkeys for units and buildings in the game. Refer to this page as a reference for developing your understanding and ability at hotkeys.